Céline Dion Calls Pregnancy 'Physically and Emotionally Exhausting'

For Céline Dion, the sixth time was the charm, but her hope to expand her family was an arduous year-long journey.

"I feel like I've been pregnant more than a year," Dion, 42, whose previous IVF attempts had failed, told the French-language Le Journal de Montreal. "I never gave up. But I can tell you that it was physically and emotionally exhausting."

But the perseverance paid off when the couple found out they are expecting twins. "There were truly great emotions after all our efforts," says the singer.

Those efforts included traveling from her Florida home to New York for months of treatments and also turning to acupuncture from a Montreal-based specialist.

"My doctors had to constantly reassure me. I [wanted] to see the babies," she says. "Each week I had sonograms. I heard their heart beats."

Now, having already endured the ups and downs of several in-vitro fertilization attempts, Dion says she's following her doctors' orders closely.

"It's stressful but I'm relaxing. I look at my little belly. I do almost nothing," she says. "If you tell me I have to stay in bed, I will stay in bed until November, when the babies are born. To bring them into the world, there's nothing more important than that. It's incredible."

Adds Dion: "We will have a beautiful family nest full of love."

And though the singer, who plans to kick off a new Las Vegas show next year, says she loves her career, she's realized that there's an even higher priority in her life.

"There are no accomplishments bigger than [being a mom]. The trophies and the money, that doesn't give meaning to life and that doesn't give you true happiness," she says. "A baby – yes."